At the swimming-pool where I go here, there is a gender neutral bathroom (marked as “All Gender”) including a shower and a couple lockers. It’s situated right in between the “Women”’s and “Men”’s changing rooms and it’s decent, although it has no device one can use to dry one’s hair. I’ve always been changing and showering in the gender neutral bathroom at the pool and been able to leave my valuables in the locker. At the end, though, when I’m all fully showered and dressed, I’m forced to use one of the gendered changing rooms if I want to get my hair dry.
At my climbing gym, the changing rooms are also gendered, with no gender neutral or gender inclusive option other than a bathroom with shower, hidden behind a staircase and marked “Handicapped”. I used it today for the first time, just to change and pee very quickly. Until now I’ve been forced to use one of the gendered changing rooms because I’ve needed to leave my valuables somewhere. Today I brought them with me to the fitness room where I was going to take my class.
Before the class started, I went up to the instructor to let him know about my ankle injury and painful tennis elbow; he nicely replied he’s help me find alternatives to some exercises. Great.
Then, as it was time to start the workout, he looked around and, addressing myself and the other three people who were going to attend his class, he said, “OK, ladies, let’s get started!” This really rubbed me the wrong way. I understand that three of us liked like women, on the outside, BUT the fourth person looked like a man on the outside, and anyway it was a big assumption no matter what. Who says that even the three persons who look and/or sound like women on the outside are/identify as women? [And who says that the fourth person actually is/identifies as a man?!?]
I tried to put this out of my mind and just focus on the workout. But as the exercises started getting tricky for my injuries already after 5-10 minutes, I decided it was too much for me. I probably would have pushed through it and worked with the instructor to find alternatives which, granted, he was trying to give me. But his generalizing, gendering assumption at the beginning was just too much for me (on top of my own physical injuries). So I quietly left class signaling to him that my injuries were bothering me too much.
In the past, I would have left it at that. Just gone my way, to do my thing, quietly.
But today I didn’t.
Today I went up to the front desk and very kindly and politely but firmly talked to one of the super nice receptionists there.
I started out by telling him that today is “Trans Day of Visibility” and therefore the things I was about to tell him were even more important than usual to me. And then I told him, in order, the three “constructive feedback/suggestions” I had: first, that the gender neutral bathroom was marked only as “handicapped” and that it would be nice for people like me to have it marked also as “gender neutral” or “gender inclusive”; second, that there were no lockers in that bathroom despite abundant space, so we (i.e. persons who use it) are forced to take our stuff with us all over the gym; and last but not least, I referred the gendering address of the instructor at the beginning of class, saying that I could understand from where it was coming but that it had made me extremely uncomfortable.
The receptionist was super nice, super understanding: he listened carefully, took note of my comments, and said he would relay them ASAP. Which he did. As I was leaving the gym a short while later, he stopped me and asked if I minded giving him my name again and showed me he had already put all the messages through in the gym’s feedback system and told the supervisor who was on duty at that moment. But he didn’t just stop there. He went further, adding: “Please know that you’re seen and heard and valued here”. In theory I already know this because it is, indeed, a very inclusive environment, and it’s one of the reasons I go to this gym and have decided to live in this corner of the world. But hearing it said aloud, directly to me, with kindness and understanding — that affirmation felt really good!
I’m so glad I spoke up.
[Note: the pronouns used in this post correspond to those indicated on the employees’ name-tags.]
The Little Prince and the Fox 